www.acs.org Discover a better online experience at pubs.acs.org In keeping with the ACS commitment to extend the boundaries of knowledge and help scientists shape the future, ACS Publications has launched a new, fully integrated content delivery platform, providing you with a better online experience and continuing to further the development of chemical enterprise and its practitioners worldwide. Now this is something you’ll want to experience. Better searching. Better browsing. Better everything. Find it all at pubs.acs.org.
BUSINESS A SOLVENT DRIES UP ACETONITRILE is in short supply, and chemists are concerned A SHORTAGE of acetonitrile is leaving chemists around the U.S. and beyond wondering how long their supplies will last and what their options will be if stocks run dry. There are good reasons why the situation is making chemists feel vulnerable. Thousands of them use the polar solvent in high-performance liquid chromatography. It is also used in pharmaceutical synthesis and in the extraction of butadiene from streams of C 4 hydrocarbons. BOTTLED UP A scientist works on a machine incorporating Agilent’s HPLC chip, which consumes acetonitrile. Laboratory chemical suppliers have been allocating acetonitrile to existing customers or not selling it at all. “The market is beyond short,” says Jerry Richard of Purification Technologies, a Chester, Conn.-based firm that buys acetonitrile in bulk, purifies it, and sells it to laboratory chemical suppliers. “You have people scrambling around trying to get material. My phone is ringing off the hook.” Richard says the heart of the problem is that acetonitrile goes into applications that are healthy and growing. But its production is tied to another chemical, acrylonitrile, which is in decline. Acetonitrile is a coproduct of the process used to make acrylonitrile, a building block for acrylic fibers and acrylonitrilebutadiene-styrene (ABS) resins. An acrylonitrile plant yields 2 to 4 L of acetonitrile for every 100 L of acrylonitrile produced. Only one U.S. producer, Ineos, bothers to extract it for sale to the merchant market, which it does at plants in Green Lake, Texas, and Lima, Ohio. Most acrylonitrile producers incinerate the coproduct as fuel. And it is acetonitrile’s status as a minor coproduct that has led to its present scarcity. Amin Dhalla, business director for Ineos Nitriles, says acryl onitrile production has been ebbing. Demand for ABS resins, used in cars, electronic housings, and small appliances, is slumping around the world because of the global economic slowdown. The acrylic fiber market is also on the decline, losing market share to polyester fibers. Operating rates at acrylonitrile plants are less than 60% globally. AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES COMPOUNDING the problem, Ineos has suffered from production outages over the past year. For example, its Green Lake plant was shut down in September in preparation for Hurricane Ike. Its Lima plant was down during the summer because of a lightning strike. Dhalla says the Texas plant will have more downtime early next year when the company brings a 20% expansion of its acryl onitrile capacity onstream. According to Dhalla, Ineos is having discussions with customers regarding what it can supply. “Obviously, we want to run our plants, but the economics of supply and demand will determine what happens to acrylonitrile, and that will determine what happens to acetonitrile,” he says. John Radke, director of research essentials at lab chemical supplier Sigma-Aldrich, thinks the shortage will last through the second quarter of next year. He says his company prepared for the shortage by building up inventories and should be able to supply contract customers. For Sigma-Aldrich and some other lab chemical suppliers, new customers are a different story. Radke says Aldrich is looking for acetonitrile supplies like anyone else is, and is paying six to eight times more than it did just in August. “New customers not under contract with Sigma- Aldrich will pay the fair market catalog list price,” he says. Chemists contacted by C&EN aren’t panicking yet. Bruce S. Levinson, a staffer with the Cleveland Clinic, uses about 1 L of acetonitrile per day for HPLC. He has about 20 L on hand and is awaiting word on an order he submitted with his lab chemical supplier for more. “I am not screaming that I can’t do my work,” he says. David R. Liu, a chemistry professor at Harvard University, says his lab group planned ahead by stocking up. “I’m aware of the problem, but so far it hasn’t had a major impact,” he says. “If we go two months without being able to get any—that might be a problem.” If the acetonitrile shortage doesn’t abate by early next year, chemists could adapt to alternative solvents like tetrahydrofuran or methanol. But Liu says for some applications, no solvent works quite like acetonitrile. “Unfortunately, substitution is not a viable option for some automated syntheses that are optimized to work in ace tonitrile,” he says.—ALEX TULLO Visit us at: www.btemsoftware.com An advanced method for recovering pure component spectra Self-modeling curve resolution for multi-component infrared and Raman spectra WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 27 NOVEMBER 24, 2008
- Page 1 and 2: NOVEMBER 24, 2008 EPA SCIENCE Agenc
- Page 3 and 4: VOLUME 86, NUMBER 47 NOVEMBER 24, 2
- Page 5 and 6: CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS 1155—
- Page 7 and 8: Outstanding Ten Peaks in Ten Second
- Page 9 and 10: news of the week NOVEMBER 24, 2008
- Page 11 and 12: NEWS OF THE WEEK COAL PLANT PERMIT
- Page 13 and 14: NEWS OF THE WEEK A CATALYST WITH FL
- Page 15 and 16: COVER STORY BLOOD COUNT Researchers
- Page 17 and 18: Go beyond the everyday. EVERY DAY.
- Page 19 and 20: executive officer of BioFortis, say
- Page 21 and 22: BUSINESS CONCENTRATES BAYER IMPLEME
- Page 23 and 24: How sure do you want to be about yo
- Page 25 and 26: Norit expects an expansion of its e
- Page 27: This financial crisis “is of a di
- Page 31 and 32: GOVERNMENT & POLICY ERIC VANCE/EPA
- Page 33 and 34: transparency, says Francesca Grifo,
- Page 35 and 36: GOVERNMENT & POLICY SHUTTERSTOCK PA
- Page 37 and 38: eform legislation, but lawmakers in
- Page 39 and 40: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CONCENTRATES p
- Page 41 and 42: However, the problem with using thi
- Page 43 and 44: NANOAPOCALYPSE NOW In the presence
- Page 45 and 46: Volume 1 now complete! Call for Pap
- Page 47 and 48: EDUCATION EXPLORATORIUM THE LURE OF
- Page 49 and 50: state of the art across the field o
- Page 51 and 52: MEETINGS TRADEWINDS BEACH RESORTS 1
- Page 53 and 54: Nominations must be received by Jan
- Page 55 and 56: Nanoco Technologies needs the follo
- Page 57 and 58: SITUATIONS WANTED PHD CHEMIST, Expe
- Page 59 and 60: Registration Now Open! New for 2009